I know that you have been lying awake at night, consumed by the question, “How old do mollusks get?”

Well now you can let go and fall asleep; because, scientists have discovered what they think is the oldest living quahog (hard shelled clam), nay oldest living mollusk, sea creature?  Nope the oldest living being. Counting the rings on the shell much like the rings of a tree, they counted over 400 years.

When this old timer was just a teenager, Shakespeare was writing Hamlet. And people were still burned at the stake for saying that the earth revolved around the sun, in opposition to the official church version.

Up to now the oldest lived animal officially belonged to a 200+ year old clam found off of America.

The two main features of this discovery that make scientists ecstatic are that they hope to find out why this creature lived so long, and to read the history of the waters.

They are like tiny tape-recorders... sitting on the sea-bed and integrating signals about water temperature and food over time
Professor Chris Richardson
Bangor University

Now that you know……………………